"This universe is infinite space. Can there be space to let be what happens to be this instant, without an immediate reaction? Just the stillness of awareness without immediately knowing and finding fault? As soon as the fault-finding mechanism sets into motion, anger, resentment, and guilt enclose and becloud the mind and nothing can be seen truthfully.
"What does it mean to see each other exactly as we are? Past memories about ourselves and each other are not what we are right now. Memory is an incomplete and inaccurate recording of the past. Now is something entirely different. Quietly looking and listening now is not memory. It is an entirely different mode of mind. It is a cleansing of perception.
"The other day the little stream that runs near the center was gushing noisily downhill with lots of muddy water hiding its depth. Today it is flowing quietly, clearly, exposing sheets of brightly shimmering green bedrock.
"Can we see things just as they are right now? Without wanting them to be otherwise? Without comparing them favorably or unfavorably? Without wanting them to stay this way forever? Without clinging and depending? Without wanting to own and possess?
"Can we human beings share life on earth together without trying to own each other or trying to get rid of each other? The idea of possessing each other gives an illusory sense of security. Along with it inevitably goes the fear of losing what we have become accustomed and attached to.
"With the loss of another — real or imagined — comes the pain of grieving, of feeling forsaken, abandoned, lost, and sorry for oneself. With the idea of losing someone to somebody else comes the agony of jealousy, anger, hate, and violence. One can verify all this thoroughly by oneself. We may cling to each other for fear of losing each other, but possessing someone has nothing to do with love. Possessions cause pride as well as fear, dependency, and sorrow. Love knows no fear and no dependency. It has no possessions and no attachments. Love is without sorrow.
"As one watches the trees in the evening sky, their trunks and branches aglow with the golden light of the setting sun, the gentle sounds of peepers, insects, and birds, a distant plane streaking across the sky, the fragrance of the evening air and the rustling leaves alive with movement, everything all at once swaying, humming, and glistening in the breeze, the clouds moving swiftly, with their constantly changing shapes and colors disappearing and appearing out of nowhere. . .there is nothing separate and nothing obstructing anything else in this total movement of aliveness. There is space for everything happening freely, nothing lording it over anything else, yet everything inseparably linked with everything else. Everything is everything else!
"This whole everything, which is no separate things, never remains the same from one instant to the next, and yet each moment is totally sufficient, whole, and without conflict.
"We are not separate from all this! There is no separate movement of 'me' and 'mine' except in thought-feeling and memory.
"Deeply realizing the beauty of this is love and joy and the ending of insecurity.”
